Punjabi and Haryanvi men are satyrs who do not recognise women as individuals unless they are family.Bengalis are artistic, wimpy, male slaves whose chains their scheming women wear as wedding rings.Malayalis are the most sexually repressed set wearing post-modernism masks.Maharashtrians are dour sourpusses with lightning sarcastic lines to hide their pathetic resourcelessness.And Gujaratis are mindless money worshippers with no culture, sex or pleasure beyond Hindi movies and bhelpuri.

These are pretty much urban India's prejudices about each other, based on accents. They are best read with Einstein's pithy disclaimer of how common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down by the mind before you reach 18. Unfortunately, these are also the broad brushstrokes by which many urban Indians measure peoples of the vast and varied geography and ecology of the politically truncated subcontinent.

When I reached college in the Bombay of 1987, I got to know a Tamil Brahmin who had already abandoned two engineering colleges and short false starts as a tuition teacher and seller of cargoes to shippers before joining a Bachelor of Arts course. We hit it off, and while I was a naive fool, he was a seasoned one. I remember telling him, much later, that his community's native intelligence was destroyed by vegetarianism and abstinence.

While that was merely a jousting one-liner, Robert Kanigel's biography of the mathematician Ramanujan will tell you how a desperate, manic and rank irrational alliance to caste practices can get you into a state where self-annihilation is tempting, especially when you are displaced. Ramanujan was displaced from equatorial Madras into wintry London and very nearly succumbed to such a vile temptation.

Needless to say, my friend suffered from no such alliances. In many ways, these stereotyped ideas of other "injuns" work in the newly opened up urban spaces in India where young men and women come in contact as equal and opposite sets of lost souls. One of the primary reasons it "works" is because most people who peddle these stereotypes are "independent individuals" by the creed of urban living.

And an amazingly loud set of these individuals in cyberspace has been telling the world at large that Narendra Modi is the best thing that has happened to India since sliced bread and piped water and, therefore, should be promoted and essentially delivered to national leadership of the country.

Muhammad Ali of Politics?

So who is Narendrabhai Modi outside of Gujarat? Modi is the Muhammad Ali of contemporary politics in the subcontinent. You can love him, you can hate him, but you cannot ignore him. But, actually, Modi is as indigenous as ayurveda is to the landmass. The pugilist allegory is merely what writers call a device to make him "travel". How does an international magazine explain a cover story about a regional satrap of startling charisma, proven popularity and irrefutable performance as a "democratic leader" while fulminating about his tendency to be an autocratic bigot?

The Gujarat chief minister's public relations agent, Apco, is probably in a tizzy on how to deliver this champion of the masses as the earthy, smooth-talking and lovable deliverer of the Gujarati people to a seemingly hostile Indian media more than to the cannier spinmeisters of world media. Once that bridge is crossed, they would have it easier projecting him as India's best prime minister ever.

In April 2010, the Malaysian parliament was up in arms with the opposition screaming murder of national pride when it became public knowledge that Apco Worldwide was paid for lobbying, especially for arranging a meeting for the Malaysian prime minister with the US president.

The Malaysian premier's chief defender in the parliament explained that Apco had a list of other prestigious clients such as the United Nations, the World Bank, the European Commission and Asean, which proved that it had a lot of expertise and experience in these matters. And, therefore, he chose a foreign company over the available local counterparts.

"True. I have no problems [admitting that]. Just as I would admit that our Malaysian football team is terrible," is how the minister defended his boss. Paying for services is part of any business deal. And nobody would know this better than the Gujarati. That Apco is said to have a questionable record is immaterial.

'Gujarat Shining'

Gujarat is in the midst of an election on which every poll has arrived at a herd-like conclusion that Modi is likely to win. The last time such a thing happened was when the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance was cruising on the crest of a buoyant economy, and a phalanx of laptop consultants decided that it was a walkover for the ruling alliance.

They coined the now famous term "India Shining". And, of course, they fell flat in their assessments because not every Indian buys his products based on advertisements, and a written-away United People's Alliance led by the Congress won New Delhi. That said, what is the great risk of a Modi victory in Gujarat?

Those fulminating against Modi in the liberal mainstream media often try to nitpick his record in the state. From all accounts, he has done rather well there. And in doing that well for two consecutive terms, a defensive Modi has boxed himself into a political corner where he is a heroic man fighting for Gujarat and Gujarati pride and "development and growth", whatever that cocktail might be.

Gujaratis have been the proud owners of an unrelentingly progressive legacy. The state has an abundance of Indus Valley civilisation sites and has always been the exporter of some of the most fascinating aspects of ancient India to the globe. A Gujarati sailor is reputed to have guided Vasco da Gama to the Indian coast. A prodigal Gujarati prince is supposed to be the progenitor of the Sinhala language and a set of Gujaratis were the first to settle in Java in Southeast Asia. They were also the first Indians Africa ever saw.

Nearly every highlight of the state's glorious history springs from its 1,600-km seacoast, though Patan was the world's 10th biggest city in the eighth century AD. The state's mercantile and maritime history is one of ease with modern technology and easy adaptability with peoples and cultures very different from its own. Gujaratis mixed and spread as businessmen, not as lords and masters or colonisers.

Starving History

It is this history that is being starved into one of Hindu chauvinism first, and after the riots and religious polarity delivered a strong majoritarian vote, into a vicious parochial nationalism akin to that of the Shiv Sena. This is absolutely foreign to Gujaratis. Remember the Parsis were given easy passage into Sanjan when a wise Iranian spoke Gujarati in mime; promising to mix with the ruler's people like sugar with milk.

As befits nationalism, it needs strong and seen-as-strong leaders who can be worshipped and feared for their ruthlessness as much as for their patriarchal patronage. But it also becomes a strategic blunder when the rest of India sees you as a parochial nationalist.

The closest outlier of a national party to be seen as a serious contender for Indian prime-ministership was Sharad Pawar of Maharashtra. His flip-flops within the ambit of broad liberal democratic ideology eventually saw him floating farther and farther away from such an opportunity when Indian national politics moved into the coalition era.

India Is Too Big

If Modi wins Gujarat, and third terms are always a big statistical climb, he will be seen as being the top contender for the prime minister's post from the BJP. Considering how divisive his personality cult has been within his own political party, his authoritarian father image and his inflexibility and vengeful treatment of political rivals, he seems already a dinosaur for coalition-era politics.

Ashis Nandy clinically adjudged Modi as a fascist two decades ago. And Nandy qualified his judgement saying, "I never use the term 'fascist' as a term of abuse; to me it is a diagnostic category comprising not only one's ideological posture but also the personality traits and motivational patterns contextualising the ideology."

One of the sobering realities of the way the idea of India took shape since Independence is that the military coup has been dismissed as a plausible situation. A lot of people will tell you that it is because Indian laws and political practice has taken care to keep the army separate from politics and always subservient to the country's politics.

But it will take a lot of effort for any military leader, even in full and complete control of his forces, to rule India. India is too diverse and big to be governable by military force. The force of a parochial personality is even less likely to achieve that.